The present invention relates to an electronic scale which stores article data, such as article names, unit prices, tares, etc., fetches stored article data in response to the depression of ten-keys or preset keys, and displays and prints such fetched article data.
Electronic scales generally operate by entering article data such as unit prices and tares into a control unit and storing them in response to actuation of a key-operated input unit such as a ten-key pad, fetching article data by entering a call number, and displaying the weight of a desired article and the unit price and price thereof. There have also been put to use many electronic scales having a printer for printing data such as an article name and date, in addition to the foregoing article data, on a label and issuing such a printed label.
FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings illustrates, in perspective, an electronic scale of the type described above. When the article for sale is placed on a weighing pan or tray 1, a control unit contained in the scale effects an arithmetic operation based on a unit price and other data which have already been fetched in response to the entry of a call number by ten-keys 3, for and displays total price, a unit price, a weight, and other data on a display unit 2. The illustrated electronic scale has a printer 4 which prints the article name, date, unit price, total price, and other data, as shown in FIG. 3(b), on an unprinted label, as shown in FIG. 3(a).
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the electronic scale shown in FIG. 1, for explaining the functions of the scale. The electronic scale includes a weighing unit 8, an A/D converter 9, an arithmetic control unit 10, a storage unit 11, a key-operated input unit 7, a display unit 2, and a printer 4. Article codes, article names, unit prices, and other necessary data are entered in advance through ten-keys and function keys in the key input unit 7, and are stored in a registration memory in the storage unit 11 under the control of the arithmetic control unit 10. The storage unit 11 includes a RAM and a ROM, as shown in FIGS. 21 and 15, respectively. When, an articles is placed on the weighing pan 1, the weight of the article is measured by the weighing unit 8. The measured weight (in analog representation) is converted by the A/D converter 9 into a digital signal, which is applied as weight data to the arithmetic control unit 10.
The arithmetic control unit 10 fetches necessary data on the article from the registration memory, effects an arithmetic operation on the fetched data and the weight data, and then displays data on the display unit 2 and controls the printer 4 to print the data on a label.
The data for each article is stored in the registration memory by operating the ten-keys to enter numbers. According to the conventional practice, entering the data through depression of keys has been time-consuming since article names are expressed by characters each composed of 4 numerals, as shown by stored examples in FIG. 4.